[rpd] Policy Proposal: PDP Working Group (WG) Guidelines and Procedures - Draft03 (PDWG Chair)

[Owen DeLong]

> On Nov 17, 2021, at 00:35 , JORDI PALET MARTINEZ via RPD <rpd at afrinic.net> wrote:
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> Below in-line
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> Regards,
> Jordi
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> @jordipalet
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> El 16/11/21 16:29, "Owen DeLong" <owen at delong.com <mailto:owen at delong.com>> escribió:
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>> On Nov 16, 2021, at 01:48 , JORDI PALET MARTINEZ via RPD <rpd at afrinic.net <mailto:rpd at afrinic.net>> wrote:
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>> While I agree with you that it is difficult to reach consensus on both policies, we tried several times to get authors from both sides to get together and never happened, and if there is no “copy” of one policy into the other (as this is the case), I think competition is fine.
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>> What it will be bad is to copy a policy from one set of authors into another one, and change a few things, because that’s a way to avoid consensus. I don’t think it has been the case here.
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> What will also be bad is if we get rough consensus on two policies that modify the same sections of the CPM in conflicting ways.
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> [Jordi] Actually not. If proposal A get consensus declared before proposal B, even if you include in the CPM A, then B, what remains is the text of B. That will be according to the PDP. Never mind if A and B declaration of consensus happens with 2 years of difference or just 2 hours. So, in the worst case, if in a single meeting there are 2 competing and conflicting proposals, the chairs have the attribution to decide which one goes last, so that one will prevail. Exactly the same way in the IETF we have documents that update the previous ones!

This assumes that to be the desired outcome of the community.

If A and B achieve consensus at the same meeting, I’m not convinced that is necessarily the case, since the order of consensus is determined not by community preference, but merely the order in which they were placed on the agenda.

Further, what remains is not B, what remains is the original text as modified by A with the modifications from B then applied against that. 

For example, consider if we had a policy text that contains “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’s back.”

Proposal A changes the brown fox to a purple rabbit.

Proposal B changes the color of the fox from brown to green and changes the dog into a horse.

Now, let us consider your suggested outcome in light of:

	Agenda covers policy A first then B…
		“The quick green rabbit jumped over the lazy horse’s back.”

	Agenda covers policy B first, then A…
		“The quick purple rabbit jumped over the lazy horse’s back.”

I think we can agree that making the overall policy outcome dependent on the order in which proposals were discussed at a meeting is probably not the ideal result. Further, I think the above shows that this could become a recipe for policies that make no sense, since both proposals were written with the intent of modifying the original language and neither took the other into account.

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> If this version missed the deadline, then it missed the deadline. We really need to stop arbitrarily making process exceptions without considering the unintended consequences which may well extend beyond just the bad precedent you describe above. It may effectively disenfranchise participants in the process because they did not expect the late arriving policy to be considered, so they don’t attend the relevant session or they are otherwise unprepared to fully engage on it due to the short timeline.
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> [Jordi] There may be an English misinterpretation of the PDP here. But my reading is that “No change can be made to a draft policy within one week of the meeting”, if the meeting starts on 17th, means that you can’t send a proposal after 9th noon, because the week before the meeting is 10th to 16th. How do you see that as English native speaker?

In general, I would interpret it to mean that the text is frozen effectively 168 hours prior to the start of the meeting. Rounding up to include the midnight prior to that point also strikes me as a valid interpretation.

Owen


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